


take me away to some place real

by ashlearose13



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: 5+1 Things, F/M, Fluff, I Love You, It's basically just cute, idk what else to tag, stan katie barton, we deserve some cute, yes i'm back on my bs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-05
Updated: 2021-01-05
Packaged: 2021-03-15 19:55:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28569597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashlearose13/pseuds/ashlearose13
Summary: Five times Clint tells Natasha he loves her, and the one time she tells him.
Relationships: Clint Barton/Natasha Romanov
Comments: 6
Kudos: 81





	take me away to some place real

**Author's Note:**

> hi it's late i have to be awake in 4 hours what's new N E WAY i started writing this like. 3 hours ago so here we are. just something cute and short and sweet bc we deserve it and 2021 is the year of clintnat okay!! stan katie barton for clear skin ❤️
> 
> thanks for reading!! find me on twitter @queenromxnov :)

**i. _it’s not just where you lay your head_**

The safe house in Marrakech can barely call itself a house anymore, but Clint still falls onto the bed and groans, long and deep, like the lumpy mattress has just cracked his back in all the right places. It’s hot inside the crumbling walls and there’s no way the tiny desk fan Natasha drags out of a closet will actually do anything but he lets her try. He’s in the business of just sitting back and watching what she does these days. 

She’s only been around for six months and they’re both still trying to learn how to be partners after  _ unlearning _ how to be on their own. Clint likes her for just being her, whoever that is. He’s still not sure he knows the real Natasha Romanoff but she’s trying, and he is too, and sometimes that’s enough. Everything had gone to shit when he brought her in and now that things have settled he’s riding the high of success for as long as he can, even if it involves dilapidated safe houses and air as thick as fog.

She dumps the fan on a chair, points it in his general direction and tries the plug in a wall socket. Nothing happens, not that Clint thought it would, and she grunts in frustration. When he peeks at her she has her eyes closed, head tilted towards the ceiling.

“Don’t worry,” he tells her. “It’ll just be more hot air.”

Natasha opens her eyes. “I had a plan.”

Clint’s curious, but he’s also tired. He doesn’t ask what the plan was and just trusts that it was better than whatever late extraction Coulson’s playing at. He rolls over on the bed, kicks his boots off, and pats the small space next to him.

“Body heat,” Natasha says immediately. “We need to cool down, Barton.”

“Only one bed,” he mutters into the pillow. “Coulson is trying to teach me a lesson.”

Natasha tries the fan in another socket. Clint admires her tenacity and the way her ponytail curls at the ends from humidity. She kicks the chair and one of the legs falls off, which is just about how put-together Clint feels. He pats the bed again and she perches on the edge with a sigh.

“This sucks.”

Clint snorts. “Didn’t think you were one to complain.”

“I’m not,” she says automatically, then lifts one shoulder. “Maybe I am. I don’t appreciate being punished for your mistake.”

“You gotta learn to love it,” Clint says. “Coulson does this to me all the time.”

Natasha smiles. Clint’s getting used to seeing it now. He likes the way it lights up her face and makes everything feel okay for a second. He can count on one hand how many times a smile has made him smile, too.

“Whatever,” she mutters. “I’ll be back.”

He makes some kind of noise and then listens to her pad across the wooden floors, hears the door creak loudly on the hinges as she shuts it behind her. Outside, Marrakech is vibrant and sticky with life. Clint waits patiently for Natasha to come back and realises that he actually  _ misses _ her. Six months doesn’t feel like long enough to form an attachment like this, but it’s friendly and familiar and makes his heart soar in a weird kind of way that he’s not used to.

He’s almost asleep by the time she comes back. The bed dips; something icy cold hits the back of his neck, and then Natasha lays beside him and he feels the first waves of cool air caress his body. He doesn’t ask where she got the new fan or the ice from. He just turns his head to look at her, grinning, and feels all rational thought leave his brain at the barely concealed excitement on her face.

“God, I love you,” he sighs, and watches the air leave her lungs in a rush.

Later he’ll cite heat exhaustion and dehydration as the cause of his impromptu confession, and Natasha will laugh, because she does that, now, and Clint will laugh too and ignore the part of him that isn’t so sure it was  _ just  _ heat exhaustion. He doesn’t tell her then, how he’s fallen just a little. 

_ Six months _ , he thinks.  _ Just try again in six months. _

******ii. _it’s not just where you make your bed_**

Maria Hill turns thirty the same day that Natasha is given her official SHIELD badge, and somewhere between leaving their bunks and getting to the bar, Clint gets absolutely wasted. He half-heartedly blames Natasha for being a terrible influence even if it  _ was _ Hill’s flask he’d spent the last half hour drinking out of, but all she does is roll her eyes and drag him up to the bar with her.

He likes drinking with friends, but he especially likes drinking with Natasha. Natasha, who has a knife strapped to her thigh beneath the dress that looks like a second skin, all black lace and red curls, who smiles at him over her shoulder as she lets every person within touching distance buy her drink. She hands one back to him with a wink and he lets the pink liquid within the glass make his head spin for just a second.

In a booth between Maria and Natasha he lets them feed him shots. Maria abandons them early on to dance with Sharon Carter, and then it’s just him and Natasha, side by side with her thigh—and the knife–against his.

“Good party,” he yells over the DJ.

She’s tipsy at the very least, and she leans into him so she can half-shout in his ear, “I’m a real girl now!”

He laughs. Technically he’s there for Maria but he’s a little more impressed that Natasha made it this far at all. She had shown him her SHIELD badge with all the excitement of a kid at Christmas and he had reminded himself to breathe while flipping it over in his hands.  _ God, Nat, you don’t know how much I want to kiss you. _

“What?” She calls.

His cheeks flush in thinly veiled horror. “I didn’t say anything.”

Natasha stares at his lips. He swallows and reaches for another shot blindly, not checking to see what colour the liquid inside is. It burns and his head spins and he doesn’t look back at her lips, because it’s been a year and all of this is still new in a kind of tooth-aching way he needs to adjust to. They’re a team now, and he wants her as more than the woman who saves his ass most days, and he can count on one hand how many times people’s smiles have made  _ him  _ smile, but he’s running out of fingers.

“Okay,” she says eventually. “Hey, you know I already ordered pizza for later?”

His mouth drops open. “What?”

“Three a.m?” She asks, lips quirking.

“I love you,” he replies, hands held to his chest. She falls against him, elbow digging into his side, and from over her shoulder he sees Maria fist pump the air. He doesn’t care. He just wraps an arm around Natasha’s waist and lets the night carry them home.

**iii.** **_as long as we’re together_ **

Natasha lets go of the rag for long enough to grab his own hand and man-handle him into pressing down on the wound in his side. He doesn’t remember how or why or where, just that she’s there next to him and the blood that leaves his body coats her arms all the way up to her elbows.

“Hold it there,” she growls. He watches through half-lidded eyes as she shuffles forward, crouches, and fires several rounds into the unknown space in front of the overturned car they’re stuck behind. There’s no responding fire; Clint’s brain is well on its way out of whatever the hell is actually happening, but he has enough sense to realise that the danger for her has passed.

He winces as her hands replace his again. “Hurts, you know.”

“Gunshots will do that to you,” Natasha says. Her voice is strained. He knows that she sounds like that when she’s scared, or worried, or giving up. He’s not sure which one he hopes for. “Just keep pressure on it. Evac will be here soon.”

He knows that it won’t be. He’d been conscious when she phoned through to Coulson and he’s been on the other end of a bullet wound too many times to deny the facts that have smacked him in the face. He might die. She might be the one to see it.

“Nat—”

“Don’t,” she hisses. Her hair sticks to her temples with sweat and something hard passes over her features. “Shut up Barton.”

“Let me finish,” he says, and it’s enough to make her press her lips into a thin line and look away from his face. “I’m leaving you the food in the fridge.”

She chokes back a laugh. “You mean the mouldy food and whatever the hell is growing on the bottom shelf?”

Of course she knows, because sometime over the last however many years Natasha had become his constant, and there weren’t many days that he came home to an empty house. She had made the place her own without being invited to and he had let it happen, for the first time trusting in something that he didn't fully understand. And now he’s dying, and now all he has to give her is a key and a couch with too many stains and words that he should have said long ago.

“It’s still good,” he breathes. 

“You’re not going anywhere,” Natasha protests. Her hands push harder and he feels it right to his core. “You wouldn’t dare leave me here.”

“Oh yea?”

“Oh yea, Barton,” she spits. “You don’t get to drag me into this life and then check out before the good stuff happens.”

The pain begins to ebb. He knows that’s not a good sign and forces his hand on top of hers. Slick with blood, but when she smiles sadly at him he can’t help but smile back.

“You know I love you, right”? He says.

She shakes her head. “You’re not telling me right now. You can tell me in the hospital and all the times after that.”

“What if I don’t have that time?”

Natasha leans forward and presses her lips to his. It doesn’t stop the wound from bleeding, but it does help ease the pain in his heart a little. She doesn’t pull away first and he can still feel the echo of her lips when his head falls back to hit the wall he’s leaning against. A tear tracks its way through the dirt and blood on her cheek.  _ What if I don’t have that time, Tasha? _

“Tell me again,” she says. “Keep telling me, Clint. Don’t ever stop telling me.”

He squeezes her fingers. “Okay.”

_ I love you I love you I love you _ .

**iv.** **_does it matter where we go?_ **

When Clint stumbles into the kitchen there’s a stack of waffles waiting for him on the table and a single sticky note stuck to the plate. He takes the whole lot back to the couch and nudges Lucky out of the way, then turns the TV on and watches the morning news unfold. Lucky whines pathetically and Clint gives in, tearing a chunk of waffle off and feeding it to him carefully.

_ gone for the day. see you tonight x  _

_ — n _

Clint smiles. He’s long since run out of fingers now, but he doesn’t feel the need to count the moments anymore. Confessing his love on his deathbed hadn’t been the plan. Bringing a Russian assassin home hadn’t been the plan either, and he’s starting to realise that maybe he just shouldn't make plans at all. Everything good has come from split second decisions or moments of pure insanity and so far he has nothing to regret.

Natasha gets him. She knows that he likes blueberries in his waffles but not his pancakes, that he would save Lucky in a fire before his bow but only because he knows that  _ she’ll _ save his bow, and most importantly, she knows that he loves her. He loved her before he even really knew her, and now he does know her and it’s better. It’s better than anything else in the world.

He spends the day finishing mission reports, then takes Lucky for a walk around noon. When they get home Liho the not-stray is waiting at the window, so he leaves some food for her inside like Natasha does and makes a start on dinner. By the time the pasta has boiled she’s walking in the door, a smile already lighting up her eyes at the sight of him, and he melts.

“Hey,” he says. “Good day?”

“Interesting day,” she tells him. She pulls herself up to sit on the counter and leans down to kiss him, slow and deep. “I have a secret.”

“Oh yea?” He hums. The pasta over-boils and he tries to salvage the stove before water ends up everywhere. She kicks her legs and watches him, and he thinks,  _ I am so lucky to share my life with you.  _

“Yea,” she repeats. “Biggest secret of my life, actually.”

Clint whistles. “Bold statement, Romanoff.”

“I’m pregnant.”

Several things happen at once. Clint drops the pot of pasta at the same moment that the smoke alarm starts to go off, causing Lucky to howl and Liho to scatter beneath the coffee table. Natasha grins, and Clint does too, and then he hoists her off the counter and they spin in the middle of the kitchen, laughing and trying to avoid the mess on the floor. 

Clint kisses her. Clint thinks,  _ I fucking love you, Natasha Romanoff.  _

“I fucking love you, Natasha Romanoff.”

She puts his hand on her stomach, and it feels the same, but it also feels like something new.

******v. _home, home_**

The last time Clint was in hospital he had a bullet wound in his stomach, and when he had woken up the first thing he had seen was Natasha’s head, cushioned on his hand as she slept beside his bed. He had watched her, then, until the nurse had realised he was awake and subsequently woke her up, and she had kissed him until the heart rate monitor became too loud to ignore. It’s up there in the top moments that he’s not likely to forget, but  _ this _ ?

This takes the cake.

Katie Barton is seven pounds, fourteen ounces of pure baby perfection. Clint didn’t think he would ever love anyone as much as he loves Natasha, and then Katie had come two weeks late and with a set of lungs that could wake a neighbourhood, and his heart had doubled in size. There’s not much that makes him cry, but he did when she was born. Holding her feels like the beginning of the world.

“How’s she doing?” Natasha asks.

Clint leaves the window sill to cross over to the bed, passing Katie over with the kind of tenderness he hadn’t thought he possessed. “She’s perfect. God, Nat. She’s the best kid in this whole building.”

Natasha rolls her eyes. “She’s not even four hours old and she’s got you hooked. You’re a sucker, Barton.”

“So are you,” he teases. “Katie has the best mama in the world, you know?”

“She’s pretty lucky to have a dad like you, too,” Natasha murmurs. “I love her so much.”

Clint watches them, the two of them so achingly similar that he knows he’ll stand no chance against them, and wonders how  _ he  _ became so lucky. Their baby has red hair and blue eyes and he’s fallen before, but not like this. This is the moon and the sun and all of the stars; this is the universe, the path the Earth follows, and he knows Katie Barton will do great things. He’s only been so sure of one other thing in his life, and so far he’s been right.

“I love you, Tasha,” he whispers. She smiles and lets him take Katie back, then closes her eyes and sleeps. There are new emotions that bloom in his chest but he just sits beside the bed, cradles Katie to his chest and lets them envelop him. “I love you too, Katie.”

The baby yawns. Clint could swear it’s a smile.

**+1.** **_take me away to some place real_ **

The sand is warm beneath his feet as he jogs after Katie towards the ocean, the sound of her giggles carrying on the air around him. The beach is busy but Natasha found a spot near the rockpools that no one had taken and they’ve been sitting under the umbrella since lunch, patiently waiting for Katie to wake up from a nap so that they could take her swimming.

There was once a time when Clint didn’t  _ have  _ the time to enjoy the beach. There was also a time before he was a dad, before he was everything to Natasha and she was everything to him. He doesn’t think of all of his past, but he does remember Marrakech, Budapest, a bar in Brooklyn; there are moments there worth keeping, just like the moments now are worth keeping.

“Daddy!” Katie squeals as he scoops her up into the air. Her chunky toddler legs kick out in a final attempt at escape before he carries her into the water, and then she wraps them around his midsection and holds on for dear life. “ _ Voda _ .”

“Water, that’s right,” Clint confirms. “Can you say ocean?”

“Shhhh,” Katie says. “Mama?”

Natasha appears over his shoulder, pressing a kiss to his cheek before she splashes water at Katie. “Hi baby.”

He lets Natasha take Katie and treads water watching them swim. Katie has a floppy hat that falls into her eyes and wants to dive under the waves, squealing in displeasure when Natasha doesn’t let her. She’s two and wild, their fearless lion girl. She pouts at him and he feels his heart melt.

“Look at you go, Katie!” He cheers. “She’s gonna be an Olympic swimmer, I just know it.”

“Last week it was ballerina,” Natasha reminds him. “You also said she would be a doctor when she got her injections.”

“She will,” he confirms. “She’ll be whatever she wants to be and more. She’s gonna move mountains, Nat. I just know it.”

Natasha stops gliding Katie through the water and looks at him. He smiles, and she smiles back; bright, brilliant, beautiful. “I love you, Clint Barton.”

_ I love you in a thousand languages, but this one I know. _

He reaches for her hand, and she meets him halfway. 


End file.
